Day 5 - Ride West to the Aegean Coast

Our planned route today.

 

What actually happened.

 

 

The view from our room in Pamukkale.  It snowed overnight and we woke to this. 

 

At breakfast we met this nice couple from San Francisco.  Believe it or not, this is the first Americans we've met out here in Turkey. Nice conversation over breakfast.  We were out on the bikes by 9ish heading off to Sirince which is near Ephesus, a planned stop tomorrow morning.  Our originally planned route of 3hrs was initially modified by hotel personnel who suggested that the roads chosen by google would never get us there due to construction. What's another hour, we thought, we have all day. Alex taped a new map to his bike and we took off.

 

 

We're driving along and we see signs for Aphrodiasis, another well preserved early Roman city.  We've seen a lot of Roman ruins, but hey, we've got all day.  We say, what's another hour or so?  We decide to stop.  We're instructed to park across the street.  We're told that a shuttle will be over to get us shortly.  Here Alex stands by our shuttle.  While waiting for our excellent ride to be ready, we were told that the ride was free - however parking was 5TL ($2.50). The parking lot was also full of wonderfully friendly people who care only that we are well fed... at each of their own establishments

 

Our exploration of Aphrodiasis was similar to Hieropolis in that we had the entire place to ourselves (practically).  The remains were extremely well preserved and major restoration and excavation was in process while we watched (actually just saw a lot of Turks sleeping around the site - but we figured a lot had to go on when we weren't looking). 



Adonis has nothing on this guy. We all put him on a pedestal.

 

Jon professes his love for Kim in front of Aphrodite's Temple.  Really Kim.  He did.

 

 The entire place has fields just filled with the excavated pieces of buildings.   It's an active archeological site.  These were piled up just waiting on restoration of a structure.

 

Alex in front of the Theatre.  Either the Theatre is really small or Alex is enormous.

 

Pretty scene from the Temple.

 

 She was cold.

Remember, only the wisest dignitaries were memorialized. Alexander the 2nd Rate.

 

 Alex loves pottery.

We tried.  Just no comparison.

 

We're out of here!  We're running two hours late but we should be in Sirince in about two hours.

 

Another beautiful riding day without a cloud in the sky. Here is clip on some of the riding today.  More to come.

 

Stopped for one of our better lunches today - but no internet!  The above food was excellent - tender, spicy.  Yum.

Alex had the bright idea to head North through the mountains rather then the straight primary road route to Sirince.  The mountain ride up North was fantastic, and was definitely the best riding of the trip.  We're both experienced riders but the technical requirements of these mountain switchbacks challenged even us.



 



 

Our intention was to cross the range and end up near our destination.  The problem was that there are no road signs.  Not a one.  So we did our best by asking passers by or anyone that would listen.  No one in this back country understands a word of English or probably even ever met an American.  By pointing at the map we were able to head in the right direction most of the time.  At some point, we found ourselves that the top of a mountain - depicted in the above pictures.  We hadn't passed a car in 45 minutes (this road was tiny) so we stopped and tried to come up with a plan.  Luckily, a car drove by eventually and we found out that although we were going in the right direction it would have taken another few hours to get to our destination and it was getting dark.  Note that there are NO lights anywhere out there. After no English communication and a lot of pointing we decided to turn around and backtrack. The mountain roads were wonderful again, but we were tired at this point.

 

 

The planned 4 hour ride turned into about 10 hours!!

 

So we get to the hotel - which happens to be up at the top of another mountain.  Beautiful, but when they told us that our "cottage" was a hike up the rest of the mountain we just about collapsed. The above is our "cottage".  Jon managed to get a picture before stumbling in. 

 

 

After a shower and recovery time we headed down the damn mountain to the reception which is the only internet access.

 Lots of exotic birds walking around.

Our view from up here.

Good night. (it's 11:10pm)